Research and Development

The University of Pittsburgh is creating the John A. Swanson Center for Micro and Nano Systems with a gift of $1.4-million from the center's namesake. The center will be housed in the recently established four-laboratory John A. Swanson Institute for Technical Excellence, which will work in collaboration with the new center. The Center for Micro and Nano Systems will focus on applied research, giving companies and researchers access to technology, equipment and services for design, modeling and simulation, fabrication and systems integration.

The former Environmental Protection Agency headquarters in Research Triangle Park, known as "The Fortress", is being redesigned as the Triangle Life Science Center. The facility, sited on 16 acres, was purchased by Triangle Life Science for $13.15-million in May 2002. Project architect O'Brien/Atkins Associates plans to adapt the facility to accommodate eight to ten tenants; occupancy is expected for late 2003 or early 2004.

The Regional Industrial Development Corp. of Southwestern Pennsylvania will renovate an 80,000-sf facility in Pittsburgh to for potential robotics tenants. Located in the state-designated Lawrenceville enterprise zone, the facility is sited at One Chocolate Square with desirable proximity to the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute cluster. The two-story facility will house up to 11 tenants and create up to 100 jobs.

The Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) is constructing the 93,000-sf Automotive Research Building at SwRI's San Antonio campus. Housing SwRI's 600-employee Automotive Products and Emissions Research Division, the facility will feature state-of-the-art facilities for the division's fleet and field evaluations using full-scale vehicles.

BioLab, a Decatur-based manufacturer of water treatment products, will relocate to 89,000 sf of office space in Gwinnett County's Hillside III at Huntcrest development in spring of 2003. Terms of the lease with Duke Realty Corp. include the construction of an adjacent 50,000-sf build-to-suit research facility for BioLab slated for completion in March 2004. BioLab is a subsidiary of Indiana-based Great Lakes Chemical Corp.

PPD, a Wilmington-based pharmaceutical and biotech discovery and development firm, has leased an additional 25,000-sf in Morrisville. PPD currently occupies four buildings totaling 283,000-sf at its expanding Triangle campus.

North Carolina Central University in Durham is considering an expansion of its 40,000-sf Biomedical/Biotechnology Research Institute. An additional facility, a mirror image of the existing building, would be sited on an adjacent parking lot. The expansion would enable the University to double its 32-member biotech staff.

M.D. Anderson Cancer Center has topped out its new $221.9-million George and Cynthia Mitchell Basic Sciences Research Building. Slated for completion and initial occupancy in November, the 18-story, 500,000-sf facility is expected to be fully operational in June 2004. Located in Houston's Texas Medical Center, the building will house six floors of research laboratories, an auditorium, conference facilities, small-animal vivariums, and classrooms for the University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Houston.

The U.S.

Lawrence Livermore Laboratory has received approval from the federal government to build a laboratory for the study of potential biological weapons in Livermore, Calif. Rated Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-3), the lab will enable research in the detection of potential threats including anthrax, botulism, and other diseases. In planning the facility, the National Nuclear Security Administration reviewed 92 public comments and, as a result, incorporated 33 changes to the planned facility.

The South Texas Blood & Tissue Center (STBTC) will soon complete a 44,000-sf expansion that will include a nucleic acid testing laboratory enabling earlier detection of Hepatitis C and HIV. The testing process will provide over 80 hospitals and clinics with the highest quality of blood available. The $10-million expansion will increase STBTC's headquarters to 125,000-sf and will include expanded facilities for umbilical blood storage.

The University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio is broke ground in December on a new $20-million research facility in Edinburg, one of three new facilities being constructed as part of the Lower Rio Grande Valley Regional Academic Health Center (RAHC). Sited on 12 acres adjacent to the University of Texas Pan American campus, the Edinburg facility will house RAHC's medical research division.

The University of California San Francisco (UCSF) is planning the Mission Bay Cancer Research Center. The research facility, expected to reach completion in 2006, will cost over $100-million. UCSF plans to develop a total of 2.65 million sf of biomedical laboratory and instructional space at its Mission Bay campus, for a construction cost of more than $2-billion.

San Antonio-based Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has completed a 5,000-sf fuel contamination research and testing laboratory. The facility houses over 4,200-sf of lab space and 12 automated test cells, one dedicated to hybrid fuel cell testing, two to diesel, and nine to gasoline, enabling a greater flexibility in the number of systems and components that can be tested at one time.

NASA's current 20-year plan for San Jose's Moffett Field involves creation of a research and development park including almost 2,000 residential units. U.C. Santa Cruz, San Jose State University, and DeAnza-Foothill Community College district may open satellite campuses in the park to accommodate nanotechnology, biotechnology and information sciences research.